John Mayer's "Asian" Music Video Was Just Released and It's as Bad as You Expected

One of the many things John Mayer revealed in his bizarre New York Times profile in late March was that his new song "Still Feel Like Your Man" — which chronicles a man whining about missing his ex-girlfriend — was indeed written about his IRL ex, Katy Perry.

That in itself caused quite a stir on the internet, but so did the revelation that he had filmed a music video for the song, which he said reminded him of “ancient Japanese R&B” before admitting that the genre "isn’t a thing."

Joe Coscarelli, the New York Times who writer got to spend a day on the set of the music video, made it clear the video would be extremely problematic, as it featured "a makeshift bamboo forest, a woman in full geisha garb and two people in giant panda suits, making up a bizarre tableau that Mr. Mayer called a 'disco dojo.'"

Given that John's entire interview was about how he's a changed man and wants to be more sensitive and less offensive nowadays, it seemed a bit odd that he would make a video that was so obviously cultural appropriative, but John claimed "that we were as sensitive as we could possibly be," and that the issue was "discussed at every juncture" before coming up with this brilliant defense:

Part of cultural appropriation is blindness. I'm on the right side of the line because it's an idea for the video that has a very multiethnic casting, and nobody who is white or non-Asian is playing an Asian person.

That's actually not a justification.

John's description of the video earned him some backlash on Twitter for using such glaring cultural stereotypes, and now that the video is actually out, it's even worse than one could imagine. It features a bar doused in red lighting à la Tokyo's famous Red Light district.

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And a Japanese villain who looks like he's from a bad '80s kung-fu film.

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There are also non-Asian women dressed as geishas, despite John's Times comments on cultural appropriation.

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